Personal list of issues to improve (a lot)
Hello everybody, my first post
Iīve had the opportunity to try ETW, and sadly I feel dissapointed by this first release... so dissapointed that Iīve decided not to buy it until the game had been properly patched, updated, and perhapo with an expansion, like the way of MTW2, or RTW, games that now have lots of expansions, mods and improvements that make them IMHO nearly "the perfect ones"
About ETW, I cannot resist to write all the things that in a brief time of gaming Iīve detected, all of them I think can be sure solved with time and patches (and good will of course...) Sure some of them are already in other threads, but I think are too important that deserve be repeated.
Where to start...
- Sea battles: Spectacular improvement on past series, but not working at all. The boarding is too difficult, and I see how my 32 cannon ship fires to an light galley with no visible effect, and on the other hand the 2 carronade of the galley hit in my galleon which explodes with only one impact... This could be a lucky shot, but Iīve seen it too many times so must be revised. And my own AI is completely dumb when I mark the objectives to my ships, wandering around the enemy with no sense, and of course meanwhile the enemy ships are firing perfectly and taking my ships to surrenderFinally, the ships of the line were powerful but in game are too much, because the "cross the T" tactics are not effective against them because the damage is the same if you fire on the stern or the board so the smaller ships have bad chances in spite of their speed and maneouverability ...The effect is that I play all naval battles on Auto and then they are resolved in a more real way.
-Pirates: Too strong, itīs supposed that THEY (AND NOT MY BATTLE FLEETS) must play "cat and mouse" with my ships, attacking weak convoys and so, but itīs the reverse one, my battle fleet running from... Unhistorical and somehow boring. In addition, the fact that destroying their cities ends up the problem... Not real and not far play IMHO, I suppose the pirates to hide in unknown sites and appear randomly or so. Sure it can be solved.
- Campaign game: Good at all, but armies are to expensive to maintain and there is no real balance in maintain a militia army and a elite army, too expensive both. Well, I correct myself, they are expensive FOR ME, the AI seems to have plenty of money and resources to maintain large armies...A revised stadistics for units or cost will solve the problem.
Another question, Iīve seen the Pueblo Nation conquering nearly all New Spain with only an two units army... the AI didnīt garrison the cities for my ally... perhaps the campaign AI must be improved in this case (but no cheats please) and of course about the naval invassions
- Land Battles: Lots of issues: letīs see... Very dissapointing "clone units" for nations. Armies of XVIII century where very colored, one of the reason to distinguish one unit from another in the battlefield (and out of it for esprit de corps), but here ingame I cannot see what damned kind of unit I'm sending to the enemy or who is been attacked. I see only yellow dots (I played with Spain) with flashing or not flags... The battle must be a colored field of uniforms, and never mind if colors are similar between nations, the big flags reveals clearly the nationality. Sure this can be improved in an expansion or patch, hope don't need a mod. In RTW and MTW2 I could distinguish all my units with a simple general seeing... a backward step...
Also, the formations are completely unreal; militia and line were trained to fight in close ranks, but I cannot imagine a mob of native american indians fighting forming lines, and in general all the irregular units. In RTW for example there were mob formations, that by the way help to distinguish the units from far...
In general, the battles occur too fast and with no time to see whatīs going on, only a clash of groups of dots moving and fighting... By the way, another annoying issue is the fact that battles in America are not different of battles in the European theatre: two armies one indian and one european fighting in open field... completely wrong. The indian units are too strong in open field, they should be strong only in woods or jungle. In RTW were units like that, so this is another backward step in CA games
Well, I had no more time to play and donīt want to be too boring, but sure I leave more issues forgotten. I only want to say that all of this thread doesnīt want to be a plain critic, only are suggestions to convert ETW from a little boring game in another splendid game like MTW series or RTW, the best series of historic games ever (IMHO)
Greetings
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by SR-71
